In the Long Run

I was sitting in church when I heard the familiar chime that signals a new text message on my cell phone. Embarrassed, I rifled through my bag to turn off my phone that I thought I had left in my car. I couldn’t find it. “Maybe it wasn’t my phone,” I thought, relieved.

A few minutes later my son joined me on the pew. We both heard the very audible, and very near, cell phone beep this time. I urgently searched my bag again, nervously aware that the “new message alert” would continue beeping every five minutes or so, if I didn’t turn the phone off.

I rummaged through papers and pamphlets, manuals, books, and music, letters and pictures—but no phone. My son exasperatedly began looking through the bag too. “It’s not in there,” he whispered. “Is it on the bench, or in your scriptures?” I shook my head anxiously. I surreptitiously looked at the families on the benches in back, and in front of me to see if they were the cell phone culprits. No cell phone was in sight among them, and no one looked agitated like I was. I concluded it must be my phone.

I couldn’t bear to hear the mortifying beep again, so I took my valise and left the chapel, planning to dump its entire contents in order to find the offending phone. But first, I decided to check my car. And that’s exactly where I found my phone. It was not my phone that had disrupted church after all.

I was almost as embarrassed to return back to my seat, as I had been when I had originally thought it was I who had violated cell phone, and church, etiquette. On future Sundays, I’ll check twice to make sure my cell phone stays in the car, and doesn’t come into the church. A cell phone is a wonderful tool, but the only long distance communication I’ll be doing in church is with God. And I don’t need a cell phone for that.

Posted by Cyppy at 7:19 PM